El Campillo

The traffic light in the middle of El Campillo is the only one for forty kilometres. When it turns red, lorry drivers brake reluctantly and commuters from the Río Tinto mines glance up from their dashboards. For thirty seconds the village has their attention. Then the light flicks green, the engines growl, and the long straight street empties again. Most travellers never leave the carriageway; they sip coffee from a cardboard cup and accelerate towards the Aracena hills, unaware that the old mining cuts behind the petrol station have filled with water the colour of oxidised copper.

At 434 metres above sea level, El Campillo sits on a tilted plateau where the Sierra de Aracena begins to shrug off the province of Huelva. The altitude keeps the nights cool even in July, and the morning air smells of damp cork oak and diesel. The village isn’t pretty in the postcard sense: the church tower is a plain brick rectangle, the façades along Avenida de Andalucía are 1960s render painted the colour of pale tobacco. What pulls the curious visitor inland is the knowledge that the surrounding landscape used to be a hole in the ground. Between 1870 and 1992, British, French and Spanish companies tore silver, copper and pyrite from the earth. When the price of metal collapsed, groundwater was left to flood the craters. Nature, given half a century and almost no money, has turned industrial wreckage into something close to a bird reserve.

Rust and Reflections

From the small car park beside the former washery, a gravel track drops gently to the Corta Atalaya, once the largest open-cast pit in Europe. The hole is now a lake two kilometres wide; its sides drop sheer for fifty metres, streaked red and violet where iron has bled into the rock. Swimming is banned—the water is still acidic enough to burn skin—but photographers arrive at dawn when the surface mirrors the sky and the cliffs glow like hot coals. Griffon vultures circle on the thermals, and in winter a pair of ospreys sometimes hunts above the tailings. Bring binoculars; the only facilities are a stone bench and an information board so faded you can barely read the Spanish.

Back in the village, the Mine Heritage Centre opens on request. Ring the town hall the day before (the guard speaks only Spanish but recognises the word “museum”). Inside, glass cases display carbide lamps, pay slips issued in pesetas and a British-built man-rail that once carried miners underground. The curator, usually the same woman who sells tickets for the summer fiestas, will point to a black-and-white photograph of her grandfather standing beside a Lancashire drilling machine. She takes obvious pride in proving that the place mattered long before cheap flights arrived on the coast.

A Street That Still Belongs to Residents

El Campillo has no souvenir shops. The nearest thing to tourism is the bar of Hotel La Parada, where walking groups unfold maps and order cañas of Cruzcampo before the kitchen closes at four. The menu is short: rabbit with bay leaves, migas fried in pork fat, and a surprisingly gentle jamón de Huelva that costs €9 a plate. Vegetarians survive on spinach with chickpeas and the house tomato salad, thick with olive oil from the cooperative in nearby Corteconcepción. Payment is cash only; the single ATM inside the Cajamar branch runs dry on Friday afternoon and isn’t refilled until Monday.

Sunday is best avoided. The bakery shutters stay down, the butcher is closed, and even the church of San Roque opens only for the 09:00 Mass. What remains is the murmur of televisions behind curtained windows and the smell of garlic drifting from family kitchens. If you must visit at the weekend, bring supplies and plan to leave the car on the southern edge of town, signed “Polígono”. Lorries use the main street as a short-cut between the N-433 and the mine at Riotinto; wing-mirrors have been clipped clean off.

Walking Through Yesterday’s Excavations

Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons. In April the dehesas are loud with cuckoos, and the temperature hovers around 18 °C—perfect for the 10-kilometre circuit that links three flooded cuts. The path starts at the recreation area of El Villar, where locals set up disposable barbecues on public holidays, and follows an old mineral railway whose sleepers have rotted to nothing. Waymarking is sporadic; download the route to your phone before you set out, because signal disappears in the hollows. The climb is gentle, but sturdy shoes are essential: the shale is loose and the colour of dried blood, and it stains pale soles orange.

By mid-June the thermometers touch 35 °C and the track becomes a dust ribbon. Shade is scarce—one ancient holm oak every half kilometre—so start early and carry more water than you think necessary. August is simply hot, empty and accompanied by the hum of cicadas. British visitors who come then tend to be geologists on field trips; they stride out at six, retreat to the hotel by two, and spend the afternoon dozing under the ceiling fan with a copy of “The Riotinto Miners” on their chest.

When the Village Decides to Party

Fiesta calendar is small but intense. On the last weekend of April, the Romería de la Virgen de la Cabeza turns the oak grove above El Villar into a refugee camp of canvas awnings and frying pans. Families drive up in battered Land Rovers, unload entire kitchens, and spend twenty-four hours dancing sevillanas beside a portable shrine. Outsiders are welcome; if you arrive empty-handed someone will pass you a plastic cup of rebujito and explain, in rapid Andalusian, exactly how the virgin saved the village from a mining collapse in 1952.

Three months later, the Fiestas Patronales honour San Roque with a foam machine, a rodeo ring and a bar that serves tinto de verano until three in the morning. The population doubles as emigrants return from Barcelona and Madrid. House prices are low—€60,000 will buy a three-bedroom townhouse with a roof terrace—and every year a few returning sons consider quitting the city for good. By the second week of August the visitors have gone again, the streets are hosed clean of paper napkins, and El Campillo shrinks back into itself.

Getting There, Getting Out

Seville airport is an hour and twenty minutes by hire car: take the A-66 west, swing south on the N-433 at La Palma del Condado, and watch for the brown sign that reads “Minas de Riotinto”. There is no train; the nearest bus leaves Huelva at 07:15 and reaches El Campillo at 09:30, which is handy for walkers and useless for everyone else. Petrol is available at a small Repsol on the northern bypass, but the pumps close at 20:00 and all day Sunday. Fill up in Seville if you land late.

Stay the night and you will hear the village’s two sounds: dogs barking at the edge of town and, every so often, the distant clank of a conveyor still moving spoil at the active mine across the valley. The noise is softer than it used to be, but it reminds you that the ground here has been picked at for two thousand years and the picking is not quite finished. Wake early, walk to the lake, and you might decide that thirty seconds at the traffic light is not nearly long enough.